


Consequence

by Dragontrill



Series: Broken [7]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Protective Steve, Traumatic Brain Injury, badass Bucky, issues of consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-14 17:45:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 12,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2200902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragontrill/pseuds/Dragontrill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place directly after "Want".</p><p>Steve pays the price for his mistake. Unfortunately, he's not the only one who'll have to suffer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Consequence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3158042) by [ogawaryoko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ogawaryoko/pseuds/ogawaryoko)



Sam had been having such a nice dream, even if he had been dressed in a Pikachu costume. Lady Gaga hadn't minded after all, given she was dressed as a fish.

Now he stood in one of the bazillion unnecessary rooms in Stark Tower, looking down at his friend's bowed, miserable head.

"You're a fucking idiot," he said.

"Thanks," Steve muttered. "Way to be supportive."

Sam uncrossed one of his arms so he could jab a finger at the man. He was so furious he wanted to punch something. "Oh no, you don't get to pull that kind of shit on me. I AM being supportive. For BUCKY."

Steve looked up at him and his face was absolute misery. Sam would have felt sorry for him if he hadn't been wearing a bathrobe and still smelled of spunk. "I didn't hurt him."

"You had sex with him!" Sam shouted.

Steve flinched. "I didn't mean to..."

"Then is it Bucky's fault?" Sam snarled. "Is that what you're telling me?"

"No." Steve closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His back straightened and after he exhaled again, he opened his eyes, his face determined. "It's my fault, not his. I take full responsibility."

There was no doubt in Sam's mind that Steve did and he sank down to sit on the couch opposite from him with a sigh. "What the hell happened?"

Steve had obviously decided to handle this the way he would a mission report, because his expression didn't flicker. "Bucky came to my room. We were asleep and I woke up when he became, uh..."

"Frisky?" Sam suggested with a grimace.

"Yes. I should have stopped him. I didn't. Then Jarvis told you." A bit of Steve's posture sagged. "What happens now?"

"Before or after I cut your balls off?" Natasha asked.

Sam nearly hit the ceiling. From the way Steve jumped, he hadn't heard Natasha come in either. She stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb with her arms crossed, dressed in a overly big purple t-shirt that came halfway to her knees. 

"I warned you not to fuck him," she said to Steve.

"Whoa!" Sam said as he leaped to his feet, arms spread. Behind him, Steve dropped his head back into his hands with a groan. "Nobody's doing anything to anyone!" Natasha raised an eyebrow at him. "What are you even doing up?"

"Jarvis told me what happened," she said.

"It was at her request, Sir," Jarvis said from above.

"Great," Sam said. "Don't tell anyone else. I'm the closest thing you have to a mental health professional here and I want a chance to figure this out before we end up arguing about it." He jabbed a finger towards Natasha. "And no cutting anything off anyone!" She smirked at him but the glare she levelled at Steve was downright venomous.

Sam tried to ignore that. "Steve. Why didn't you tell Bucky no?"

Steve looked up at him, over to Natasha, and back at Sam. There was no doubt he was miserable and blaming himself. "He... he caught me by surprise. It's no excuse, but I've wanted Bucky for seventy years. I just... the thought that he wanted me... I lost control."

Sam's eyebrows rose. He'd known that Steve was in love with Bucky. That had been obvious from the second he saw him on that bridge in DC. But he was saying something else with this as well. 

"You never slept with him before?" he asked. Steve shook his head. "Is he even gay?"

"He... I never saw him show an interest in men before," Steve whispered.

"Damnit, Steve!" Natasha snapped.

Sam raised a hand. "It doesn't matter. Bucky could have slept with half of the Dodgers and it wouldn't matter now. He can't give consent. We all agreed to that when the courts let him come and stay here."

Steve stood up. "I'll go. I'll leave tonight and turn myself in to the authorities in the morning."

"No court is going to condemn Captain America," Natasha told him.

"She's right," Sam sighed. The shit storm if the leader of Avengers went to court or worse, actually went to jail, would be enormous. He didn't even want to think how their enemies would try to take advantage. "But you are leaving the tower tonight."

Steve gave him a look that was almost wounded. 

"You let yourself lose control once," Sam told him. "And in this sort of situation, once is the only chance you get. You need to stay away from Bucky right now."

Steve swallowed and nodded. "Bucky won't understand my going."

"We'll tell him you had to go on a mission," Natasha told him. "He'll understand that."

Steve nodded again, head bowed. "Alright. I... yes, alright. Whatever you have to do."

Sam almost thought his heart would break to look at him. One moment's indiscretion... it didn't matter. Bucky was the vulnerable one and they had to put him first. "Bucky will come and stay on my floor with me. We'll get him used to the new arrangement before you come back." Steve looked at him as if he'd never thought he'd be allowed to come back at all. "That's a permanent move," Sam told him. "You have to understand that you won't be allowed near him unless someone else is there. It's not fair to put temptation on either of you." Steve's head dropped again, broken once more.

"Will you talk to Bucky about this?" he asked.

Sam hesitated. "I think we need to get his shrink in on that. I'm not qualified enough to treat him." 

If Steve didn't want Bucky's psychiatrist knowing about what happened, he didn't say it. He just nodded again and left the room to get his things. Natasha looked at Sam and then followed him. After all, Sam remembered, Bucky was currently sleeping in his bed.

Sam dropped down onto the couch and rubbed his face with his hands, wondering when in the world everything had gone so much to hell.


	2. Chapter 2

Bucky woke up stretched out under the blankets on Steve's bed, his jockey shorts abandoned and his long hair tangled in his face, lying on his belly and hot despite his nudity, except for one exposed foot. His left arm was outside the blankets too, but he couldn't sense temperature with it.

He felt sleepy, wanting to go back to sleep and see how much of the day he could waste, but there was something that woke him and he lifted his head, blinking through a mass of brown hair as he looked out from under the canopy of sheets.

"...st-ve..?" he mumbled.

"No," said a different voice. "Steve is... he isn't here right now."

He'd never been woken by someone other than Steve. Bucky blinked his eyes clear and peered at the newcomer. He was familiar. Dark hair, dark skin, gentle tone to his voice. It took Bucky a long moment of thinking before he could put a name to the face.

"Sam?"

"Yes," Sam said, his face twisted up in an expression Bucky decided must be a smile. He felt too groggy to interpret facial features at the moment and he yawned.

"If you'd like," Sam said, "there's time for you to have a shower before breakfast. Natasha's gone downstairs to talk to your therapist, Dr Alexander? He's going to come up and talk to you up here in the residence today."

Dr Alexander had never done that. Bucky always went down the elevator to visit him. He frowned and pushed himself up on his forearms, tossing the blanket back off his head and shoulders to pool against his lower back as he looked around Steve's room. This was a change. He didn't like change. He couldn't see Steve.

"Where's Steve?" he asked.

Sam hesitated for only a second before he answered, but Bucky was already feeling out of place, threatened by this sudden break in his routine, and the Soldier in him picked up on it immediately. 

"Steve's not here," Sam told him. "He had to leave last night on a mission. He said not to worry."

Bucky stared at him. "No."

Sam blinked and Bucky felt his anxiety grow. "Uh, yeah. He did. Why would I lie to you?"

After seventy years of brainwashing and torture, Bucky could think of lots of reasons to lie. The memories were mostly in the fog, out of sight and usually forgotten, but they never went away, keeping with them the paranoia of having no one to trust. The Winter Soldier had only found one man he believed in and Bucky eased up onto his knees, staring at this man who'd lied to him in his place.

"No," he said. "Steve, no. He wouldn't..."

Sam took a step towards him, hand outstretched. "Bucky, calm down, everything's going to be alright."

"No!" Bucky reared back, throwing the blankets off and lifting a knife he'd grabbed from underneath the pillows before he drove it down, through Sam's hand and into the mattress. Sam gave a high-pitched, startled scream of pain and dropped to his knees.

Bucky was already off the bed, over by the wall and digging through the clothes drawers. Steve wouldn't just go. Steve would never just go. No matter what the mission, he always came and said goodbye to Bucky before he left. He always told him to be good and that he'd be back. He promised he would always say goodbye. It was part of their routine. Steve wouldn't break his promise. 

The door flung open. A man in a purple shirt and carrying a bow came in. Hawkeye. He yelled in surprise when he saw Sam and started towards him, putting him squarely on Sam's side and therefore an enemy.

"Look out!" Sam screamed.

Bucky pulled a handgun out of the drawer, cocking it and flipping off the safety as he lifted it. Clint dove to the side, drawing an arrow incredibly fast, and they both fired at the same time. 

The bullet cut a deep groove along Clint's side, a non-fatal shot as the man continued to roll around the side of the bed and out of range. At the same time, Sam pulled the knife out of his hand with a horrible sound and dove over the bed to join him on the other side. An alarm was going off overhead and Jarvis could be heard calling out for assistance.

Bucky lowered the gun and looked at the arrow stuck in his right shoulder, just below his collarbone and in the meaty part. It hurt, but he didn't feel much pain. The sheer, horrified terror and utter anxiety he felt were a lot worse. Then both were swamped by the utter mental stillness of the Winter Soldier, which took the place of fear and brought with it a mission.

Steve was gone. They lied to him about Steve. 

Find Steve.

The Winter Soldier reached over with his metal hand and gripped the arrow firmly before pulling it out in a single move. It came out easily, leaving a bleeding wound, but the damage was minimal, not enough to slow him by more than five percent. His serum would heal him soon enough. He had his mission. He'd be able to fulfil it. 

The bed was wood, a lousy sort of barrier. The Soldier fired three shots through it, each widely spaced. He didn't particularly care if he hit anyone at this point. Both men were already injured and the shots were just to keep their heads down. 

He turned, uncaring of his nudity, and ran out of the room, the door closing behind him with a click of the lock. A short hallway took him to the apartment's living room, gun ready. He saw no one and quickly gathered what weapons he could - a kitchen knife and another handgun. Steve had left his clean laundry basket on the couch, so he grabbed a pair of jeans and pulled them on so he had a way to carry his weapons. He didn't bother with more than that. With the alarm sounding overhead, there was no time.

"Master Barnes," Jarvis said. "Please stop. This isn't necessary."

The Soldier ignored the voice and ran to the door out of the apartment. It was locked.

"I have shut down all exits, Sir. You cannot leave. Please put down your weapons and wait for Mister Stark and the others. No one wants to harm you."

The door was reinforced steel. He could break it, but it would take time he didn't have. Bucky Barnes had never paid enough attention through the fog in his mind to know how long it took the Avengers to assemble for an emergency, but the Soldier saw everything. Stark would be in his armour by now. Thor would be coming. Bruce would wait in his lab until called in. Steve would have already been here, but if Steve were here, none of this would be necessary.

The Soldier turned towards the floor length windows that provided the morning light Steve liked to draw by and fired the more powerful of his handguns three times. The glass was strong, ostensibly bulletproof, but the treatment used to make glass bulletproof wasn't permanent and it broke down over time, especially in the presence of sunlight. The third bullet shattered the glass. 

The Soldier tucked the two pistols and the knife in the top of his jeans and as he heard Mjolnir come through the door behind him, he jumped out the ninety-third window.


	3. Chapter 3

The Winter Soldier had already turned around before he finished jumping out the shattered ninety-third floor window, so he was able to see back inside as a massive hammer flew through midair, and then reversed course and smashed its way back out through the steel door. Then he was falling, straight down and less than three feet from the glass, concrete, and steel side of the tower.

He reached out and caught himself with his left hand on the bottom sill of the window a floor below the one he’d left. His legs smacked against the glass of the window another floor below that and he let go again, only to catch himself again another two floors farther down.

In his flesh and blood hand, he held one of the handguns, the other one an uncomfortable weight tangled in the belt loops of the jeans he wore. They were loose on him, hanging low on his hips and the legs were so long that denim pooled over his bare feet. It was cold this high up, the winds unpredictable and cruel, but he didn’t feel them. They were irrelevant so long as they didn’t cause him to miss his grip.

Thor came out through the broken window, the red and gold of Stark’s Iron Man suit a sparkle rounding the top lip of the building farther above, diving towards both of them. The Winter Soldier let himself drop another two floors as Thor turned towards him, towed along behind his strange hammer. 

The Soldier could do nothing against that hammer. He could do nothing to harm Thor either, but many battles were won against unstoppable foes. His left hand gripping the sill of the floor above him, his feet braced against slick, cold glass, he turned his body sideways, his arm with the gun extended, and fired.

He saw Thor’s expression of surprise, that someone would shoot at him, that someone would even think mortal bullets could harm him, but the Soldier wasn’t aiming for him. He wasn’t aiming at the hammer either, made he’d heard from wood of the world tree and the metal heart of a star. He aimed for the leather loop that extended from the worn wrapping around the shaft of the hammer, between the shaft’s end cap and where Thor’s hand gripped it.

The leather parted and with a curse that was entirely born of surprise instead of fear, Thor fell, caught by gravity. The hammer looped around again as if it had a mind of its own and dove after him.

Two seconds later, so did Tony Stark, yelling for Thor to hold on, he was coming; as if Thor had anything to hold onto. He wasn’t a military man; he paid no attention to where the Soldier was.

The Soldier was ready for him. Just as Stark passed, he kicked away from the side of the building as hard as he could, dropping the nearly empty gun and drawing the kitchen knife in the bare moments he had before free fall turned into him tackling Iron Man in midair.

“What the fuck?” Stark screamed, knocked off course by the unexpected impact and tumbling end over end as he tried to regain control. The Soldier hung on, legs wrapped around Stark’s waist and his flesh arm underneath the suit’s right arm, forcing it at an awkward angle to keep Stark off balance. Not that his flesh was quite strong enough to keep that up for long. 

It was long enough for him to drive the point of his knife into one the gaps under a steering flap on the back of Stark’s suit. HYDRA was well aware of Stark’s technology. Not the blueprints, but the external views and the recordings of how it performed. Not enough to duplicate the suit itself, not yet, but enough for the Soldier to devise a method to exploit it that Stark wouldn’t have planned for, because no one else would have tried it.

The knife, made of the best quality available, held where lesser steel would have shattered when the Soldier wrenched it to one side, and with a shrill shriek, Iron Man turned that way. When the Soldier twisted the knife forward, the suit dove.

“What are you doing?” Stark yelled. “We’re your friends!” 

The Soldier said nothing, focused instead on not crashing them into one of the nearest buildings or into the rapidly approaching ground.

“You’re going to get us killed!” Stark screamed.

Not until the mission was done. The Soldier hauled back with all the strength in his arm and the suit levelled out, rocketing above the open square in front of the tower, only a few feet above the ground. He shifted so he was hunched on Iron Man’s back and with a final jab of the knife into the suit’s workings and a screech of warping metal, he leaped straight up, arching over through a backflip and down to land in a one armed crouch on the asphalt, his flesh hand already drawing the second handgun. 

Stark gave a truly rude string of curses and crashed through the lobby doors of the Avengers tower.

“You have made a mistake, Son of Barnes.”

The Soldier looked over his shoulder and turned around. There was a crater on one side of the square, one that Thor was in the process of pulling himself out of, his hammer back in his hand. There was no sign of injury on him, but the rage in his eyes was inhuman. His arm flexed and the hammer started to spin, held by the tattered remains of the leather loop.

Before he could release the hammer, the Soldier cocked the gun and held it at arm’s length, his face never turning from Thor’s. He didn’t need to. He could clearly see the slim woman who’d been crossing the square from where she’d stepped out of a limo out of the corner of his eye. She hadn’t run like so many other people in the square or the sidewalk had. When he pointed his weapon at her, she froze, her chin raised.

Thor’s hammer stilled. “You would not dare,” he breathed.

The Soldier said nothing. He had his mission. Collateral damage was irrelevant. 

The woman was to his right, Thor straight ahead. To his left, he heard Stark clamber back out of the Avengers Tower, coughing and cursing. “Son of a bitch, you miserable little – PEPPER!”

Pepper. He knew Pepper. He liked Pepper. She was nice to him and the Soldier blinked; briefly, inexplicably confused. 

His reaction, along with any comprehension that he was even having a reaction, vanished into the kind of instinct that couldn’t be programmed but existed in the best soldiers regardless. 

Someone was behind him. 

The Soldier spun, flesh arm turning the gun away from Pepper and towards his unseen assailant, his metal arm rising towards his face. It was the only thing that saved his throat when he felt Black Widow’s thighs settle around his shoulders and a wire thin garrote circle his neck. 

She’d already tried that once. She really should have known better. He turned the gun upside down, his arm bent at the elbow, and fired it straight back over his shoulder.

Widow’s weight came off his shoulders and he turned as she hit the ground, hands clasped to her belly and looking up at him with narrowed eyes used to betrayal. He cocked his head at her. 

“You have one chance to tell me where Steve is,” he said as he aimed the gun directly between her eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm enjoying everyone's commentary on this story. Honestly, I post for the comments I get, but I've been getting a lot lately that are helping me flesh out the story. You're pointing me in directions I hadn't necessary thought of and at new ideas to take into consideration. Thanks, keep it up!

When Steve left the tower with only a change of clothes in a small backpack, his wallet, and his motorcycle keys, he didn't go far; just up the street on foot. Half a dozen blocks or so up it was a sidewalk cafe where he used to sit and draw before the Avengers were first created, back when he thought he was alone in the world and always would be. Back when Bucky had been dead for either seventy years or three months.

He didn't have a sketchbook this time, but he also didn't sit with his coffee and stare at the tower as the sun rose because he wanted to draw it. He wanted to be back inside it.

Would Bucky be awake yet? He'd liked to snooze when they were both kids and that tendency hadn't changed in him now. Without Steve there to get him out of bed, he'd likely sleep to noon or until he had to drag himself to the bathroom. Hunger wouldn't get him up since HYDRA had long since broken him of the understanding of what hunger even was. 

Sam would have to get him up this morning, make sure he showered and remembered to brush his hair. Make him his breakfast and afterwards take him to the gym. They always worked out together. Bucky was a good, attentive spotter for the heavy weights and he liked to run on the treadmill. It was something they could do together and Buck had to keep his musculature up in order to support the weight of his left arm. 

Sam wouldn't be able to spot for Bucky, not at the weights Steve had worked him up to. He wouldn't know to watch for the little line between his brows that meant his shoulder was aching where it joined the prothetic either. He wouldn't know that Bucky liked the lavender and peppermint scented rub that Steve would massage into his shoulder and that he didn't like the smell of the eucalyptus one. 

Steve closed his eyes and exhaled a slow breath. Sam wouldn't know that Bucky liked peanut butter on his toast, that he hated bananas, and that there was a bottle of hazelnut cream in the fridge for his coffee.

How was Sam going to explain where Steve had gone? Steve promised he'd always say goodbye before he went on a mission, but he hadn't been able to bear waking him, hadn't been able to take the thought of Bucky seeing the misery in his eyes, of him realizing something was wrong. Of him blaming himself.

There was no one to blame but Steve. His eyes still closed, Steve lifted his cold coffee to his lips, seeing again that memory in his mind, where he'd been fully asleep and dreaming of skin against skin and the low, teasing laugh of Bucky in his ear.

When he'd first woken up, he'd thought he was still dreaming, the passion in his dreams merging with the reaction of his body to the feel of Bucky lying between his thighs and thrusting their hips together. He didn't know if Buck was the initial impetus of his dream, but oh, waking to him had felt so good. 

Since he'd first figured out what his dick was for he'd wanted Buck in his bed. He'd wanted that lean, muscled body against his, wanted his hot breath on his neck. It made him stupid, made him slow in the head even as every other part of him reacted far too fast.

He should have pushed Bucky away the instant he woke up. He would have, but his sleepy mind had waffled over the thought that he couldn't just shove him off like some sort of heartless bastard. He had to ease him off, be gentle. He'd even told Jarvis everything was fine, but only three thrusts into it, the most intense orgasm of his life cost him the man he loved the most.

"Would you like a top up on your coffee, Captain?" 

Steve smiled at the waitress standing beside him. "Sure. Thanks, Angie."

Angie gave him her sweetly dimpled smile and filled his cup. "You're not usually here this early in the morning," she said. 

"Yeah, well, I was up anyway." 

Her smile broadened. Like a lot of people after the battle against the Chitauri, she knew who he was. Keeping his identity a secret had been made impossible even before he was frozen and ended up in the history books and more movies than he could count. A lot of people went a little crazy when they met him, but those who saw him on a semi-regular basis were usually more laid back. If they weren't, he just avoided wherever it was he ran into them anyway.

"I hope you've been having a good summer," Angie said, hovering a bit, but she was a kind young woman and while she did have a case of hero worship for him, he had saved her life. 

"Good enough," he said with the small smile even the Bucky of today told him was sad. "Thanks for the coffee."

"We're always here, Captain," she promised him and went off to serve someone else.

Steve sipped his coffee, wondering again about Bucky. How were they going to explain this to him? Three seconds. Just three seconds and everything was lost. 

He put the cup down, a shock of despair stabbing him in the heart. Seventy years out of time, everyone he'd ever known gone, except for Bucky, broken and diminished as he was. Sam had asked him once what made him happy. He hadn't known then, but he did now. Bucky made him happy. Even if he had to spend the rest of his life taking care of him without Buck ever looking at him with full comprehension in his eyes, he'd be happy, because Bucky was happy to be with him. 

Steve looked up at the tower, shadowing the cafe from the light of the morning sun. Three seconds was less time than it took for Bucky to fall from the train. Less than the time for the tesseract to pull the Red Skull apart. Less than the dive of Schmidt's plane into the ice or Steve's fall into the Potomac. They'd both come back from all of that, even if it took them several lifetimes and losing one another in the process. Even if both of them had their scars. They'd promised each other to last until the end of the line.

Steve's eyes hardened. He'd fought for his country, he'd fought for his world, and he'd fought for Bucky. Now he was going to fight for himself, because three seconds wasn't enough time for him to give up the fight and lose the best thing he'd ever had. He respected Sam and his professional opinion, he really did, but he wasn't going to surrender. He'd never touch Bucky sexually again, he'd make damn sure of that, but he wasn't going to leave him either. It would take time, but he'd accept every provision Sam laid on him, every babysitter he set to watch them both until he regained his shattered trust. His promise to Bucky was an oath sworn long before any made as a soldier, as Captain America, or even as an Avenger.

"To the end of the line," he murmured to himself and he stood and pulled out his wallet to pay for the coffee and leave Angie a tip. He hadn't given up in any fight except for the one over the Potomac and in his surrender he'd won that one. He'd win again now.

He started back towards the tower. He'd talk to Sam. Probably they should have Bucky bunk with him anyway, get him interacting with other people in the team more. It would be good for him, and Steve would think of some way to explain to him that certain behaviours weren't okay, without him feeling he was being punished. All of this had to be done without Bucky thinking he was the one in trouble.

There was a boom ahead, followed by a crash of metal and glass. Steve froze for a second and then he was running. That had come from the tower and it didn't sound like a car crash. 

He was only a half dozen blocks away. At full speed, he sprinted there in no more than twenty seconds, the last block raced against the rush of terrified people running the other way.

He should never have left his shield back in his room. 

Steve ran around the final corner and skidded to a halt at the edge of the square in front of the Avengers tower, his mouth hanging open in shock. Thor was standing in front of a crater in the ground, covered in pavement dust and swinging his hammer. Tony was climbing out of the rubble that used to be the front of the building, screaming curses with every missile launcher on his suit open and prepped for launch. Pepper was hurrying away from the building, to where Happy was trying to reverse her limo back through the snarled traffic to reach her. 

Natasha was lying on her back on the ground, her hand pressed to a gut wound that was obvious from all the red soaking her white shirt, while a half naked man with long hair and a silver arm pointed a gun right at her head.

"BUCKY, NO!" Steve shouted.

Bucky turned, his blue eyes immediately finding Steve, and his entire face lit up in a grin.

"Steve!" he yelled, dropped the gun, and ran across the square to him, arms wide. Once he was in range, he basically launched himself forward and Steve grunted at the two hundred and more pounds of him slamming into his chest and wrapping his arms around his neck. 

"I missed you!" Bucky said. "I was looking for you." He pressed his face against his neck and just hugged him, laughing as happily as if nothing had happened at all.

Steve stared over his shoulder towards the others. Thor, rushing to Natasha's side. Tony, lowering his arms and withdrawing his missiles.

"What. The. Fuck?" Stark said. 

Steve had no answers for him. He just held onto his friend.


	5. Chapter 5

Bucky was in a brilliantly happy mood.

He play-fought with Steve all the way back to his room, tickling and pushing against him, giggling while he squirmed his hands free every time Steve managed to catch them. He didn’t try to run, however, or notice the apartment’s broken door and shattered window, both of which Steve looked at with hollow eyes.

The best that Steve could guess, as far as Bucky was concerned, nothing he did while he was the Winter Soldier happened. The resulting damage didn’t even exist. Steve didn’t know if that was a sign of denial or something far more worrisome. 

“Come on, Stevie,” Bucky begged. “Let’s go to the gym!” He braced his feet against the ground, pushing against Steve, and with a sigh Steve scooped him up bridal style and just carried him while Bucky laughed and tried to squirm over his shoulder. “I want to run!”

“Nope,” Steve told him and it was a struggle to keep his voice even. “It’s time for you to take a nap.”

“But I’m not tired!” He looped his arms around Steve’s neck and started pressing closed mouth kisses against his cheek.

Steve tilted his face away and shifted his grip, dropping Bucky’s torso down a foot and carrying him more flat as he turned them both sideways to get them through the bedroom door. Bucky let him, trusting him not to drop him. There was so much trust there.

“Be a good boy,” Steve told him. “And you are tired. You just don’t know it yet.”

Bruce was in the room ahead of them, setting up the stand on the right side of the bed. Bucky tilted his head back so he could look at him upside down, but returned his attention to Steve when he sat him on the side of the bed. 

“Tell you what,” Steve said to him, rubbing the back of one knuckle against his cheek while his other hand gently grasped Bucky’s right wrist and stretched his arm towards Bruce. Bucky started to look towards it and Steve tapped his cheek to get his attention back on him. “How about, if you’re good and take your nap, later we’ll go to the gym and have a race. See if we can break Tony’s treadmills. How does that sound?”

Along with the metal arm and reinforcements to the left side of his rib cage, Bucky had a permanent shunt under the skin on the top of his right hand, a small, almost invisible tube that was retracted out of sight when it wasn’t used to inject chemicals straight into his bloodstream. Steve didn’t like to even imagine how many shots Bucky got over the years to make HYDRA decide a tube permanently attached to his vein was a better solution than hunting for one. Bucky wasn’t afraid of needles. He didn’t seem to care as Steve turned his hand over, arm still extended, so that Bruce could ease the shunt out, open the cap, and insert a needle into it, connected to the IV he’d already set up.

“I guess,” Bucky frowned. “But I’m really not sl-” he yawned. “Not slee-” He yawned again, his eyelids starting to flutter. 

Steve put a hand to the back of his head and eased him down. “Easy, Bucky. I told you that you were sleepy.”

Bucky was going under fast. The chemical cocktail Bruce used was originally designed to try and knock out the Hulk. It didn’t work on him, but they’d found out it was a workable anaesthetic for Steve. It worked even more quickly on Bucky.

Steve pulled the sheet up to his neck, careful to leave his right arm with the IV exposed. “Have good dreams, Buck,” he whispered.

“…k…” Bucky managed and he was out.

Steve stood up and had to take a moment just to gather himself. Bruce gave him the time while he checked the IV bag. “He’ll be out for about four hours, unless I change to a new bag,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to give him more than that.”

“Right.” Steve inhaled heavily through his nose and held it. “Ten minutes. Main meeting room.”

“I understand, Cap.”

Steve turned and Tony was standing in the doorway, bruised and dusty. He hadn’t washed yet and his expression was tight. Steve didn’t fail to notice he still had his repulsor glove on.

“He’s asleep, Tony. You won’t need that.”

Tony sneered. “Excuse my paranoia around the guy who put a gun to my girlfriend’s head.”

Steve swallowed down every retort he could have made. Tony had a right to his anger. They all did. “I’ll see you in ten,” was all he was able to get out as he went past him.

Tony listened to Steve crossing the apartment, eyes locked on the beautiful, vicious monster in the bed. Bruce made a final check of the seal around the shunt and brushed some hair away from Bucky’s face.

“You got enough of that drug here that you could stop his heart?” Tony asked him, gaze never shifting.

Bruce straightened up and just looked at him for a long minute before he answered. “I do, if I want to be a cold-blooded murderer.”

Tony’s face twisted. All he could see was the look on Pepper’s face, the startled fear that was matched by his own hysterical terror. “You maybe wanna go take a walk?”

“Sure.” Bruce circled the bed and put an arm around one of Tony’s. “Come with me.” He looked Tony straight in the face and his eyes glistened green. “We don’t want to be late for the meeting.”

“Right,” Tony muttered and let himself be dragged out of the room.


	6. Chapter 6

In the meeting room on the Avengers' common floor were, among other technologies, there was one of those big hologram television screens that Tony designed. They could be put anywhere, as far as Steve could tell, and right now it hovered directly over the centre of the oblong table, set to the news.

Steve stopped in the doorway because Thor was watching a news report on the Winter Soldier versus the Avengers, video provided by the cell phone cameras everyone seemed to have. They'd got some shaky but unmistakeable footage of Bucky pointing a gun at first Pepper and then Natasha.

Thor looked over his shoulder at Steve from where he sat, Mjolnir seated on the table in front of him. 

"I had not expected this fight," he said. "It is always more difficult to engage in combat when you do not wish harm to your opponent."

"Yeah." Steve sighed and walked into the room to join him. "Thanks for not killing him."

A hint of a smile touched the god's lips. "Short of causing a great deal of destruction to our surroundings at the time, I am not sure I would have been able to. Your shield brother is a warrior the likes of which I have but rarely seen in all my long life." He paused. "I had not suspected he had such a fire within him." Something in his tone let Steve know if he had, Thor wouldn't have been so quick to trust his back to him.

"Yeah, that's Bucky. Best scrapper I know." Steve took the remote and turned off the display.

Thor eyed him. "Scrapper is not a sufficient term for the ruthless focus I saw today. That was a skill of which songs are sung."

Steve bowed his head. "I know."

Clint stormed in, an angry frown on his face and sunglasses hiding his eyes. He threw himself down in the seat next to Thor, barely wincing at the bandaged wound in his side.

"If anybody cares, Nat's in surgery," he spat. "They're pretty sure they can save her spleen."

Steve winced and Thor gripped the archer's shoulder. "We all care, Son of Barton," he said. "Save your anger. It suits you ill."

"Yeah, whatever," Clint muttered and wouldn't look at Steve, who sighed. This was going to be just as rough as he'd thought. He couldn't even kept his composure. This was all far too personal for that.

"What about Sam's condition?" he asked. He had to ask. "Will he be okay?"

"Mr Wilson has been given over to a specialist surgeon's care, Sir," Jarvis told them. "They are confident he will not lose much if any mobility in his hand."

"Yeah," Tony added as he strode into the room, Bruce right behind him. "Shouldn't be a big deal. Who needs full use of both their hands anyway?"

Steve looked at him. "Tony..."

Tony jabbed a finger at him. "No, you don't get to 'Tony' me. Not until I'm done. You're the one who made us bring that psycho here. Now we're two Avengers down and I have every goddamned right in the world to be pissed about it." He slammed himself down into a chair so hard it skidded back a few inches. "Nat and Sam are at the hospital and Pepper isn't going to be anywhere near this building while trigger finger Luke is upstairs. So this is everyone. Tell me why the hell I shouldn't fire a repulsor blast right through your boy's head and save us all a lot of trouble."

"Jesus, Tony," Bruce groaned. "Have some compassion."

"Fuck compassion. He almost killed Pepper."

Steve leaned against the table, hating for once that he wasn't back in the armour where he had the rank to tell people to shut the hell up. He was tired, stressed, worried beyond belief, and he was afraid. Truly, undeniably afraid.

"Tony," he tried. "All of you. I'm sure today was just a huge misunderstanding, but we're okay."

Clint lifted a hand. "Natasha. Spleen."

Thor slammed a fist down on the table so hard that it shook. "Let the Captain speak! He is the leader here and you are sworn to him!"

"Fuckin' no I'm not," Tony snarked, his arms crossed. Bruce cuffed him across the back of the head. "Ow."

"None of us really know what happened," Bruce said. "I know I don't. I just got the call when I was in my lab to come and help Sam and Clint. They'd both been hurt. But I don't know why Bucky turned on them." He looked at Clint. "Do you know?"

The archer shrugged. "I was out in the main room when that happened. Nat asked me to keep an eye on Sam. Said Buck was gonna be unhappy 'cause Steve'd been kicked out of the tower."

They all turned to Steve. "Say what?" Tony said.

Steve took a deep breath, but there wasn't any way he could maintain any illusion of control in the face of that piece of information, so he sat down. 

"I was asked to leave the tower for a while," he admitted.

They continued to stare. "Uh, why?" Clint ventured. 

Steve flushed red with embarrassment. "I... Bucky and I... we... I... that is..."

"Oh god, you fucked him, didn't you?" Tony shouted.

"What?" Clint shrieked. 

Thor frowned. "I was under the impression that the Son of Barnes was not permitted to engage in such relations."

Steve wanted to sink through the floor. "It was an accident!"

"How the hell do you accidentally fuck someone?" Tony asked. His phone started to ring with some sort of heavy metal beat, which he ignored until it stopped and then immediately started up again. "Trip and fall on his dick?"

"Repeatedly," Clint sniggered.

"Guys," Steve begged. "Please."

Bruce took a deep breath and clasped his hands together on the table, his expression serene. "Everyone is going to shut up," he said in a tremendously calm voice, counterpointed by the hard guitar riff coming from Tony's phone, "before I go green and rip all of you apart. Steve is going to tell us exactly what happened and why." He spun on Tony, his eyes blazing with emerald fire. "AND YOU ARE GOING TO ANSWER THAT FUCKING PHONE!"

"Holy shit!" Tony yelped and yanked out his phone, carrying it across the room and into the hall. "This is Tony Stark's voicemail. Leave a message after the click...really?" 

Whatever the call was, Steve didn't want to know. He looked at the rest of them, feeling all of his ninety plus years even as he reminded himself what he'd decided in the cafe. He would be with Bucky until the end of the line and he would fix this, no matter how bad it got.

"Last night, Bucky slept in my bed, platonically. We've done this before." Since they were both about eight years old, he didn't add. 

"I'm feeling a 'but' coming on," Clint said as Tony came back in, giving Steve a strangely pinched look before he retook his seat.

"But," Steve said. "Bucky woke up at some point and started, uh..." He had to say it. "started humping me. He... by the time I woke up and realized what was going on, I, uh..."

"Hit the motherlode?" Tony interrupted. "Experienced premature ebuckulation? Popped your century old cherry?" Bruce smacked him again.

"Uh, yeah. To all of those." Steve rubbed the back of his head with a wince. "Sam asked me to leave for a while. Uh, a long while. I think Bucky took it badly."

"Y'think?" Clint yelled and slouched back in his chair, grumbling. "All this over a fucking dick. Goddamn it..."

Steve looked back at them. Clint was annoyed and muttering to himself. Tony was distracted. Thor looked bemused. Only Bruce was staring straight at him. Steve returned his stare.

"You didn't plan that?" Bruce asked.

"God, no! Never!"

"And you were asleep when he started?" He looked up. "Jarvis?"

"Yes, Sir. Captain Rogers was asleep when the incident began, according to my sensors. It did not last long after his waking, but I was instructed to inform Mr Wilson of any transactions, regardless of duration."

Bruce looked at Steve for a moment longer, and then leaned back in his chair. "Bucky can't consent, but when you're asleep, you can't consent either."

Steve let out a breath, a huge feeling of relief flooding his gut. They didn't hate him for it. "Thank you," he whispered.

"Yo." Clint waved his hand. "To be honest, I don't care who's laying who right now. I do care about the crazy Russian assassin who went utterly bat fuck and took down five Avengers. All because Steve left the goddamned building?"

Steve winced. "I'll take to him. It won't happen again."

Tony's distracted look turned back into a glare. "When he first came here, you said it wouldn't happen. It did. I can handle two adults fucking, even if one of them's wired like a damn kid, but not the out of the blue assassination attempts!"

"I'll take him with me," Steve told him. "We'll leave, find a place of our own to stay."

Tony laughed. "And then what? He has another temper tantrum when the mailman is late and slaughters the local preschool? He's a rabid dog!"

"I can control him!" Steve yelled.

"No. I'm sorry, Cap, but you can't."

Steve looked towards the new voice at the door, one he hadn't heard in a long time and hadn't expected to hear again. With the notable exception of Tony, the others had similar expressions of shock on their faces.

"I wish I had better news for you," Phil Coulson said from the doorway, "but the Winter Soldier must be stopped."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I've been asked to put warnings on this chapter. A rundown of what happens is in the end notes. If you don't want spoilers, don't read them.
> 
> Hopefully I put enough to not trigger anyone. This and the next chapter(s) (which will end this story) can be skipped)

For a long minute, everyone just gaped at an impassive Phil Coulson standing in the doorway with a file folder under his arm.

Finally, Clint reached up and lowered his sunglasses far enough down his nose that he could peer at him over the top. “You’re supposed to be dead,” he said.

“I know,” Phil agreed and walked into the room. “Actually, I was dead. Long story.”

“And you didn’t think to mention this?” Clint continued.

Phil gave him a sadly amused look. “Everything was quite chaotic for a while. Too much kept happening, too many disasters to deal with. There still are, actually.” He looked at Steve. “Captain Rogers.”

“Agent,” Steve said wearily. Phil Coulson wasn’t the most rabid of his fans, but he was the first one Steve encountered in this modern world, where the privacy of celebrities was largely ignored. Phil kept his eagerness under control, however, and only creeped Steve out a few times. “I’m glad you’re alive,” he said and meant it.

Phil smiled. “Thank you, Captain.”

“Lovely,” Tony said. “Great reunion. Fantastic. I assume you’re showing up now because of the giant homicidal elephant in the room?”

“Elephant?” Thor asked him.

Tony fanned his hands out on either side of his head. “Big animal. Floppy ears. Prehensile nose. Sometimes stomps down villages. Did we never show you Dumbo?”

“I do not believe so.”

“Jarvis, make a note. Queue Dumbo for Blondie.”

“Noted, Sir.”

Steve was rapidly losing what little patience he had left for Tony Stark. “Agent Coulson,” he started.

“Director,” Phil corrected.

Steve blinked. “What?”

Phil set his folder down on the table. Steve followed the movement and went cold when he saw the title “WINTER SOLDIER” on it. 

“I’m the new Director of SHIELD,” Phil said. 

“SHIELD still exists?” Bruce asked.

Phil nodded at him. “Yes. Just a fragment of it, but yes. We’re clean of HYDRA at last and rebuilding it entirely from the ground up.”

“Good luck with that,” Steve said, gaze never leaving the folder. He’d been a SHIELD agent for a while, he’d thought. Technically, he might still be one. He liked Phil, but he didn’t know if he owed him any loyalty and with that folder lying there, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. “Why are you here now, Phil?” he asked. Everyone knew the answer to that; they weren’t stupid, but no one called Steve out for actually asking when they heard the note of pain in his voice. 

Phil winced and placed the tips of his fingers on top of the closed file. “I’m here for the Winter Soldier, Captain.”

Steve’s mouth went dry. “His name is Bucky. Bucky Barnes. The last of the Howling Commandos. A war hero.”

“A brain-fried monster,” Tony muttered and doubled over with a cough of pain when Bruce’s elbow hit his stomach.

Steve ignored them. “I’m not letting you take Bucky away,” he warned.

With the same unflappable calm Phil showed to everything, he met Steve`s gaze. ``You won`t be able to control him, Captain. I wish it were otherwise, but it`s true.”

“You said that before. I can. Bucky listens to me.”

“If you’re with him 24/7,” Tony coughed with a wary glare at Bruce.

Steve looked at him. “If that’s what it takes, then that’s what I’ll do!”

Thor cocked his head to one side in the silence following Steve’s shout. “Son of Coul. The Son of Barnes has been gifted with the heart of a child. He is loyal to the Captain if not to the rest of us. What is it that makes you feel this will change?”

Phil opened the folder. Steve saw it was filled with paper and photographs, more than in the file Natasha gave him back in DC, but he saw the same photograph he had there, with Bucky frozen inside a cryo-tube, his face turned blue and lifeless. The sight of it made Steve feel sick.

Phil turned to a different page, one showing a brain scan in black in white. There were notations made all around it in Russian, not that Steve would have understood them if they’d been English. He’d focused his eidetic memory on tactics and history, not medicine. However, e didn’t need to know any medicine to know whose brain that was.

“SHIELD has made the Winter Soldier one of our priorities since DC. An assassin of his skill isn’t something we can ignore, no matter who he is.” He lifted his eyes to Steve. “For as long as he was with you and safe, he weren’t overly concerned. Until today. Now we are. We have to be.”

“This morning was an aberration,” Steve told him. His heart was starting to pound again. Natasha had been hurt, Sam had been hurt. Pepper and so many others could have been killed. “Bucky won’t go off like that again, I swear it.”

Phil nodded. “I believe you, but,” He tapped the scan. “This is Sergeant Barnes’ medical file. The details of what was done to him. They weren’t uploaded to the internet, but I have an extremely good hacker who was able to find them about six months ago.”

“Six months?” Clint said. “And we’re only seeing them now?”

“My hope was they wouldn’t be necessary. The last thing I wanted to do was risk upsetting a situation that looked to be stable.” Plus he worshipped Captain America, Steve thought. He didn’t want to upset him. Steve really hoped that would still hold in whatever Phil was going to say next.

“The situation isn’t stable anymore,” Phil said. Tony gave a loud snort that went ignored. “Sergeant Barnes has a traumatic injury throughout this part of the brain.” He traced his finger over the scan. “It’s caused his alexithymia, the condition where he can’t process or understand emotions, and effectively reduced his mental age to a young child. There’s also damage to his memory and cognitive centres. What we’ve learned is, this isn’t an accidental side effect of the mind wipes. It was done to him deliberately, with the full intention that he not be able to heal from it. They wanted him to be this way.”

Steve thought he was going to throw up. Everything he’d learned about what was done to Bucky outraged him, but this…

“Why would they do that?” he whispered. The other Avengers looked as ill as he felt, even Tony. Bruce had his eyes closed while he chanted to himself under his breath.

Phil sighed. “As a… doctor… from those times who’s still alive and who we found put it, it was done to create a hunting dog from a human being. The dog does as its master orders. It feels no hesitation or regret.”

Steve suddenly wanted to leave the room and go back upstairs, to see Bucky. To sit with him while he slept and keep him safe. Bucky did still have emotion. He could communicate. He could love. Steve knew that he did without any doubt. Bucky loved and that wasn’t just a reflection of Steve’s love for him.

“Then why the mind wipes?” Thor asked. “What is their purpose?”

“Control. When he’s blank, Sergeant Barnes does exactly what he’s told. Orders aren’t questioned, regardless of what they are.”

Steve looked at Tony and Clint, remembering videos taken at an expo that they’d thought were funny but weren’t funny at all. Clint looked away, embarrassed. Tony just frowned. 

“So he flipped out this morning because he hasn’t been wiped?” he asked.

“In the simplest terms, yes,” Phil confirmed.

Steve slammed a fist down on the table. “We’re not wiping Bucky!” He’d kill the first person who suggested it.

Phil faced him down. “No. We’re not. No one is going to do that to Sergeant Barnes, not ever. But he is dangerous. You have to face that, Cap. He’s a child in his mind, one in the terrible twos. If he doesn’t like something, he lashes out and he’s not in the body of a child. He’s a super soldier. He could kill every one of the Avengers and five minutes after be happy, with no concept of what he’d done.” 

He looked straight at Steve as he said that. Steve wanted to deny it, but he couldn’t stop seeing Bucky, happily cuddling and trying to play with him while Natasha and Sam were being loaded into an ambulance. 

“I can keep him under control,” he said anyway, even while the words sounded increasingly hollow. Steve felt like he was drowning again, only crashing into the Artic hadn’t hurt this much.

Phil shook his head. “HYDRA experimented with that in the late forties, let him stay awake between missions, without wipes. Their records say he became child-like, always looking for praise. He was devoted to his handler. Even grew up a bit, right past the tantrums of the terrible twos to the child who refuses to do anything but say no. Only when the Sergeant decided to say no, he didn’t just sulk or run away the way a child would. He slaughtered two-thirds of the base before they could bring him down; including the handler he’d obeyed for years, right up until the moment he didn’t.”

“Fuck,” someone said. Steve couldn’t be sure who it was. It might even have been him.

“He wouldn’t hurt me,” he whispered.

Phil closed the folder with a sigh. “He wouldn’t even know that he had, Cap. He could turn on anyone and not understand why he was in trouble for it. Nobody is prepared to take that chance. Not with Captain America, not with any of you. I was sent here with orders from the World Security Council, from NATO, from everyone you can imagine. The Winter Soldier was high on the watch list yesterday. Today he’s at the top, with the highest priority. I’ve been ordered to stop him from being a threat again, no matter what it takes.”

Slowly, Steve straightened up, eyes on Phil, aware of everyone else in the room and that he didn’t have his shield or even his uniform on him. That Thor had his hammer and might or might not take his side. That Clint and Tony were both angry and wanted payback for their loved ones. Bruce was uncertain. He would probably sit any fight out, but the Hulk would side with Bucky, if he could be made to understand. 

“What do you intend to do?” he demanded and his next reaction was going to be entirely dependent on Phil’s answer.

Phil still didn’t back down and Steve couldn’t decide if that was courage. “I will not kill the best friend of Captain America. The world owes you far too big a debt for that. It owes him too big of one.” He paused. “There is some hope… stem cell research, nanotechnology... Ten, maybe twenty years in the future, it’s theorized they’ll be advanced enough to heal the damage in Sergeant Barnes’ brain. Enough for him to be safe, maybe even live a normal life again.”

Steve’s breath caught at that. Heal him? He’d love Bucky for the rest of eternity, regardless of how wounded or limited he became. That would never change, but to give Bucky the chance to experience a full life again? To maybe give him back his freedom? 

To maybe, a tiny part of his mind added, have him for his lover at last?

Clint raised his hand. “Yo. Voice of cynicism here. “You said maybe in twenty years. What’s gonna happen to him until then?”

Phil closed the file. “Cryo-freeze.”

Steve shot to his feet. “No!”

“Captain, there are currently fifty-eight different kill orders on him-”

“I said no!” he shouted. “You’re not putting him on ice again!”

“The technology for this is very advanced. He won’t be harmed by it.”

Steve shook his head, furious. “Advanced by being practiced on him! I won’t allow it!”

“He’s dangerous,” Phil tried again.

“I don’t care!” In that instant, Steve didn’t care about that at all. He just kept seeing that photo of Bucky in the ice.

“Captain.” Phil almost looked pained. “I’m sorry, but it’s already been done. Sergeant Barnes is gone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for Bucky having kill orders put on him and Phil Coulson placing him into cryo freeze without Steve's knowledge or consent. 
> 
> More warnings for deliberately inflicted brain damage and the afteraffects. Discussion about Bucky being a threat to everyone around him, including Steve.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't think there are any warnings on this one...? If in doubt, see the end notes.

Steve raced down the hallway, banked so wide around a corner that he left a human sized dent in the wall, and smashed through a set of fire doors without slowing. He was focus, determination, but underneath that he was terror and desperation, and a need so strong it blocked everything else out.

He ignored the elevator as too slow and took the stairs to his floor instead; where he'd left Bucky, left him sleeping and defenceless, left him thinking he was safe, trusting he was safe, never doubting, never believing for an instant that-

He smashed through what little remained of his apartment's front door and sprinted for the bedroom. It had to be alright. Avengers' tower was the safest building in the US. Nobody could breach its security. Bucky had to be in there and he was going to beat Phil Coulson unconscious for pulling such a cruel prank. Again.

The bedroom was empty, the sheets pulled down to the foot of the bed and the IV stand left abandoned under the window. Steve's mouth went cold and dry and immediately his mind flipped over from panicked desperation to world class tactician.

He pulled out his phone. On it was an application Tony wrote. He teased Steve that he was an old man when it came to technology, but Steve understood tech just fine and he'd made damn sure he knew how to use it. It was a tracking program keyed directly to the tracer implanted in Bucky's metal arm. 

He was in the building, underneath in the loading zone. While the program read out distances and quantified the best routes to get there, Steve went for the guns he kept in the room, but whoever took Bucky took the time to clear out his weaponry as well, except for his shield. He grabbed it and ran back out of the bedroom, where he paused.

Clint and Tony had followed him, both of them now in the middle of the living room. Steve eyed them and Clint immediately put up his hands. 

"Not gonna stop you," he said. 

Steve nodded and looked at Tony. "You let them in, didn't you?" he asked. "The people who took him."

Tony looked pained. "It's Coulson, not HYDRA or some nefarious shadow organization," he argued. "We can trust Phil. He promised Buck wouldn't be hurt. What was I supposed to do? Bucky's dangerous and he's in danger. You aren't looking at this rationally."

Steve flung the shield at him and caught it on the rebound while Tony crashed over the back of a sofa. Clint winced.

"There goes that dental work." 

"He can afford it," Steve growled. "Where are Bruce and Thor?"

"Bruce started to Hulk out," Clint told him. "Thor's getting him to his cage."

Steve nodded and started for the door again. "Cap!" He looked back at Clint, who took his sunglasses off and looked him straight in the eye. "I'm gonna follow Tasha's lead," he said. "For what it's worth, I think she'll side with you." 

"I like to think she will too," Steve agreed and looked down at Tony. "Take care of him," he said and headed out the door.

He took the stairs, not trusting Jarvis not to stop the elevators. He certainly didn't trust the AI to be on any side other than Tony's. Tony, who did stupid things to defend his loved ones. Well, so did Steve.

Steve vaulted his way down the ninety-three floors, leaping over railings and across the nearly endless middle drop of the stairwell to reach the landing on the floor below, and then repeat the move to the next floor. He had to be fast. They were in the landing bay, which meant vehicles, and he wanted Bucky safe before they got him out of the tower.

He dropped straight down the well for the last ten floors and crashed through the doors into the maintenance and storage areas for the tower. Usually there were custodians and delivery people there, but Phil's people had obviously moved them out. 

They'd also obviously known that Steve would be coming, if not how violent his reaction would be. Steve saw an African American man standing at the end of the hallway, something about his stance and face oddly familiar. He swore when he saw Steve and raised a bulky handgun, firing a blast of something blue from it.

The instant Steve saw that gun, he had his shield up. The blast scattered across the scratched target on the front and the man cursed again as he aimed towards Steve's legs.

"You don't want to do this, man!" he shouted.

Oh, Steve did. People thought they were afraid of Bucky's combat skills? He dove forward, over the agent's second shot, and flipped head over heels in midair, back onto his feet without slowing his pace as he threw the shield. The agent dodged fast enough to save his teeth, but he still hit the ground hard, all the breath knocked out of him. Steve caught the shield, ducked to grab the man's strange gun, and kept going.

The doors at the end of the hall he'd been guarding led into a section of the parking garage made for huge trucks to drop off supplies, with cement columns holding up the high ceilings and pools of shadows everywhere thanks to most of the lights being off. The truck where Bucky's signal came from was ahead, a semi parked alone and facing the ramp that led out to the street.

Steve was fully expecting there to be another guard waiting for him and still he got clotheslined when a tall woman stepped from behind the third pillar he passed and slammed him across the throat with a long, thin rod. Steve's feet went out from under him and he crashed onto his back, wheezing for air like he was an asthmatic again. The woman pointed another of those guns at him and Steve swept at her feet with his legs. She was fast enough to dodge.

"Stand down, Captain," she said. "We're not your enemy."

Steve aimed his stolen gun at her. "You're pointing a gun at me. That usually makes you an enemy."

"They're not lethal," she said. "So I have no problem shooting you and apologizing later."

"I have a gun too," he pointed out.

"So we shoot each other," she shrugged. "I can live with that. I assume you're here because of Coulson."

Steve slowly rose to his feet, both of them with weapons extended toward each other. "Yeah, I am."

"I told him he shouldn't tell you, but he wanted to have full honesty."

Steve sneered. "If he'd wanted full honesty, he would have asked me if I was okay with this."

"You would have said no and your power of attorney for Barnes' care is trumped by world security concerns."

"No, political panic is trumped by him being my best friend."

She gave a sniff of utter disdain. "So you'd feel much better if he got the chance to kill you and maybe heal enough later so he'd realize he had? That's love."

"Agent May, stand down." 

Phil Coulson limped out of the hallway, a bloody rag held to his nose and the other agent wincing at his side. May cast her eyes towards him and lowered her gun, ignoring the fact that Steve still had his pointed at her. 

"I told you this was a stupid plan," she said to Phil.

"Noted. Thank you." 

Slowly, Steve lowered the gun while the two men approached. Coulson looked tired and in pain, but he was still polite.

"These are agents Melinda May and Antoine Triplett."

"Hi," Triplett said. "Call me Trip. Uh, it was an honour getting my ass kicked by you, Sir."

This was getting a bit surreal. Steve rubbed his throat, the serum having already almost healed it. "You look familiar."

Trip grinned. "Hope so. You knew my grandpa. Gabe Jones." 

Steve blinked, suddenly thrilled to hear that. He forced the ill-timed emotion down and away and glared at Phil. "I want Bucky back. Now." 

Phil sighed. "Cap, I'm sorry. I hoped that by taking the decision away from you, we'd make this easier. Everything I said is still true. If Sergeant Barnes isn't contained now, every statistic we have says he'll be dead before the end of the year. There are two many powerful people afraid of him."

Steve swallowed his pain at that. "I can take him and run."

"You can't run far enough," May said. "This is the best deal you're going to get."

Phil started towards the truck. "Come with me."

Steve fell in at his side, the two agents behind him. He felt like he was caught in an undertow, smashing back and forth against hidden rocks. What they were warning him about, how they said the world's leaders and its terrorists were going to react...

...The tactician in him said they were right. The Winter Soldier took down the Avengers for everyone to see and the world couldn't afford to ignore him. The best Steve could hope for was time enough for them to forget.

Phil led him into the truck, the interior of which was a well lit, highly technological laboratory with two women and one man inside, all of them gaping at Phil in shock.

"What happened to you?" the smaller of the two women shrilled, her hands fluttering around her face as she scurried over. 

"Captain America is unhappy with me," he told her. 

Steve ignored them, hurrying over to a set of three coffin-like pods at the back of the truck. Bucky was in the centre one, curled on his side with his hands tucked under his chin. There were no lines of stress on his face, no sign of nightmares in whatever frozen dream he was having.

"Oh, god, Buck," Steve sobbed and realized he was sobbing, fingers clawed against the pod's small glass window as it he could simply tear Bucky out of there. But he didn't know what just opening the pod would do. 

One of the trio who'd been in the truck, a thin, curly-haired young man, edged towards him. "Uh, it was a perfect transfer," he told him in a faintly accented voice. "He slept through the whole process. No distress whatsoever."

Bucky looked so young in there, like when they were kids and didn't have to worry about anything except for Steve's health, and Bucky would have done anything it took to make him well.

"You still think he can be healed some day?" he asked, never taking his eyes off of Bucky. 

"Oh, yes!" beamed the woman who'd fluttered over Phil. "There's so many advances, the technology is just snowballing along." She started nattering on about nanites and stem cells and theories even on how to combine them.

"Jemma," said the last woman. "You should shut up now."

Steve traced the outline of Bucky's face along the glass. Bucky was happy, Steve knew that. Happy and loved, but with a death sentence hanging over his head and a world that extended no farther than the walls of the tower and probably never would. 

May stepped up beside the pod, potentially risking her life against his mood, but she didn't seem any more worried than Natasha would. "It's past time for you to decide what's best for him," she said.

Steve closed his eyes. He already knew what was best for Buck.

He bowed his head for a moment, exhaling softly, and straightened up. "You have a secure location in mind?"

"Yes," Phil told him. "Highest classification. One we're positive that HYDRA never knew about. He'll be safe there."

"We," Steve corrected.

"Pardon?"

Steve turned around. "I said we. If he's going into cryo for the next two decades, then so am I." 

"But... but... you're Captain America!" Trip managed. The others looked horrified, except for the impassive May. Phil was white and looked like he'd swallowed his tongue.

"You think I give a shit?" Steve snarled. "I gave eighty years of my life to the shield. I stopped the Red Skull, I stopped HYDRA. I stopped Loki and the Chitauri. I've given enough, now I'm going to take something back for me and for Buck. He's not going to wake up a generation from now among strangers, not this time. You didn't recognize his autonomy, fine, I'll never forgive you for that, but you're damned well going to recognize mine." He jabbed a finger at them. "I don't care if the world is about to end. I've saved it twice. If you ever wake me again, it better be because you woke him first."

Steve threw his shield down and it clattered against the floor as he turned back to the pods and pressed his forehead to the glass.

"I'm coming with you, Bucky," he whispered. "To the end of the line, just like I promised."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for Tony's teeth meeting Steve's shield, since that makes me cringe a bit. No real detail.
> 
> Warning for Steve demanding he go into cryo to be with Bucky. Bucky is seen in his cryo-tube. Steve cries.
> 
> I brought the Agents of Shield into this. I haven't seen the entirety of the series yet, as I'm a lazy tv watcher, so hopefully I don't break canon too much. I do, however, feel that Melinda May is totally badass and should be written as such, even when up against a pissed off supersoldier. 
> 
> I think there has to be an epilogue to this so the other Avengers can go "oh shite, we done did him wrong", but the main part of this story is over.
> 
> The series is not. Steve and Bucky will return! Sort of.


	9. Chapter 9

There wasn't much room in the truck trailer, but they made do, sending the SHIELD agents out while the Avengers gathered inside.

"This is all my fault," Sam whispered, his right arm in a sling to protect his bandaged hand and the fingers of his left trembling as he touched them to the glass in the rightmost cryo-pod.

Steve looked almost made of plastic under the tinge of the glass window, his face smooth and clear, his eyelashes dark against the pallor of his cheeks. Sam could almost think he was asleep, if it weren't for the cold under his fingers and Steve's utter, deathly stillness.

"I never should have separated them," he choked. "But that's what you do. If you think someone's care might be compromised, you separate them from their caretaker. You have to, to keep the patient safe. You don't listen to what they say. You pull them apart and investigate, so that no one ends up hurt." He pressed his hand to his mouth. "Oh, god!"

"Then it's my fault too," Natasha told him. She was pale and likely shouldn't have been out of bed yet, but no one was willing to argue with her. No one even brought it up. Within the hour, Steve and Bucky were being taken away to a place not even the Avengers had the location of and all of them might be very old by the time they saw either of them again. If they saw them again. 

"It can be seen as anyone's fault," Thor said, "should we wish it. I could blame myself and my people, for not offering to heal the Son of Barnes."

"Why didn't you?" Clint asked. He had his arm around Natasha, who was feeling poorly enough that she accepted the support.

Thor gave him a sad smile. "Because they could not. All our medicinal skills are geared for the healing of still bleeding wounds in battle, of slow creeping disease gone unnoticed. We have nothing for a crippling, deliberate blow such as his." He touched his large fingers to the glass over Bucky's face. "Scars left to harden for so long... they would never have been allowed to occur."

"Then why are you blaming yourself?" Sam asked. "It's definitely not your fault."

"Shall I not repeat the same words to you, Son of Wil? They would mean the same."

Tony moved forward. He'd held back instead of engaging in his usual bluster. Only part of it was the fact that Steve's shield had broken most of his front teeth and he was on a lot of painkillers until he went to the dental surgeon. He'd refused to go until after this, however, and he stared back and forth between the two men, neither of whom he suspected he'd live long enough to see again. He wondered if Steve had known when Coulson's people sedated him for the tube that he may never see any of them again, that he may never wake up at all. Tony understood science and technology inside and out. He understood exactly how the cryo-tubes worked and the energy and maintenance they required. They were more delicate than they seemed. Even under perfect conditions, something could go wrong. Neither of them may live long enough for Bucky's theoretical cure. If there ever was one. Tony also understood just how much that was a pipe dream coughed up to give Steve some kind of hope he'd have his friend back. Tony would see that the topic was researched, he'd make damned sure of that, but even with his brain on the job, he knew it was extremely unlikely that Bucky would ever be coming back. Which meant Steve wouldn't.

He touched his hand to Steve's tube, the same benediction as the rest of them. "Sorry, Cap," he mumbled and the words hurt his mouth as well as his heart. "Don't think this coulda gone down any different, but I still wish you'd waited long enough for us to tell you what a bunch of fuckin' idiots we are."

"Oh, he knows," Bruce said. He was pale, trembling with the need to focus on being calm, but he needed to say goodbye too. So did the Hulk, but no one was sure how they were going to explain this to him. "I'm sure he would have waited, but he didn't want us trying to talk him out of it." 

"The Captain is wise," Thor mused. Everyone nodded in agreement.

They were quiet for a time then, until at the end of the hour the shaken Phil gave them, Natasha moved, stepping gingerly over to Steve's tank, where she pressed a dry kiss to the glass over Steve's face. 

"Невозможно жить без солнца, и нельзя жить без любимого человека," she whispered to him and turned to press a similar kiss against Bucky's tube. "Послебуря хорошую погоду, после скорби приходит радость."

She straightened then, only moving a bit stiffly, and started towards the door. Before she reached it, she looked back. "Come on, it's time to let them sleep."

She led them out, still the Avengers, and the last one to leave turned off the light behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What Natasha says:
> 
> To Steve: "It is impossible to live without the sun and it is impossible to live without your beloved."
> 
> To Bucky: "After a storm comes fair weather, after sorrow comes joy."


End file.
